Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Testing methods used by the
Environmental Protection Agency in a Wyoming town where
residents blame hydraulic fracturing for water contamination are
flawed, and an updated analysis doesn’t show drilling tainted
the aquifer, an industry group said.

The American Petroleum Institute in Washington, which
represents companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Halliburton
Co., said its analysis of water-testing data pulled by the U.S.
Geological Survey from an EPA-drilled test well didn’t find
evidence of chemicals that the EPA had found a year ago. The
group did find examples of shoddy scientific practices.

“Soup to nuts we are seeing poor to sloppy work,” Erik
Milito, the group’s director of upstream operations, said today
on a conference call. “EPA’s water quality investigation at
Pavillion, Wyoming, adds to our concerns about similar testing
it is conducting in its national study.”

A Geological Survey report released Sept. 26 on water
testing on one monitoring well near the rural Wyoming town
identified levels of methane, ethane, diesel compounds and
phenol, which the EPA had identified in its report last year.

The EPA cited the presence of those compounds to tie
fracking near Pavillion to water contamination in a draft report
in December. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, uses millions of
gallons of chemically treated water and sand to free oil and
natural gas trapped in rock. The technology helped the U.S. cut
dependence on imported fuels and lower power bills.

Endangered Water

Critics have said fracking endangers water supplies, while
the industry maintains that no confirmed case of such
contamination has ever been demonstrated scientifically. If the
Pavillion results hold up to further scrutiny, they could refute
that contention.

The driller, Encana Corp., said it’s not responsible for
the pollutants in the water. Separate data from the EPA’s retest
of water in the area was released on Oct. 11, and wasn’t
discussed by today’s industry report.

The EPA’s December report was the first U.S. government
finding to link fracking and water contamination. The EPA and
USGS re-test results are “generally consistent” with the EPA
findings from last year, David Bloomgren, an agency spokesman,
said in an e-mail today.

The API’s analysis of the USGS data found that the
chemicals the EPA found in its testing wells could have been
caused by the paint in the steel pipe used to line the well.

Inconsistent Results

“Most of the key indicator compounds that the EPA claims
show a possible link between hydraulic fracturing and supposed
groundwater contamination were not found in the USGS samples,”
the API report said. “Thus, the USGS results are inconsistent
with EPA’s results of 2011.”

The industry group said key chemical compounds, glycols and
2-butoxyethanol, weren’t found by the USGS.

Diesel-range organic compounds, uranium, radium, methane,
ethane and arsenic, all were found in that water, according to
an analysis by a hydrology expert working with local farmers.

“It looks like the data is comparable between the USGS and
EPA,” Wilma Subra, who has her own testing company and works
with residents in Pavillion, said Oct. 11, when the EPA released
its own follow-up findings. “This result confirms what was
found before” that linked gas-drilling with contaminated water,
she said.

Encana, based in Calgary, owns 140 natural-gas wells in an
area of cattle and hay farms outside of Pavillion, about 230
miles (370 kilometers) northeast of Salt Lake City. The company
argues that contaminants found in domestic water wells are
naturally occurring, and the two test wells that the EPA drilled
in 2010 were improperly constructed.